Your dermatology office visit: The effects of target visibility, target-distractor similarity, satisfaction of search, and time pressure on a visual search for cancerous moles

Basic and applied studies of visual search have demonstrated a number of factors that influence search accuracy and speed. Among these factors include target-distractor similarity, visibility of a target against the background, and subsequent miss errors. While some applied settings for visual search have been extensively studied, dermatology has received little attention from visual search research. Here, participants (Arcadia students) completed a visual search task for cancerous moles (melanoma and carcinoma) among benign distractor moles, simulating a dermatological search. First, participants were trained to identify melanoma, carcinoma, and benign moles. Once they reached criterion, they performed a speeded skin search for these moles on a skin background. We varied (1) target visibility with skin tone, (2) target-distractor similarity (melanoma is more visually similar to benign moles than is carcinoma), and (3) the number of targets on a trial, to measure subsequent misses. Since dermatologists are often under great time constraints when seeing patients, we investigated the effect of time pressure by displaying a dynamic clock on half of the trials. Consistent with visual search literature, skin tone (target visibility) and mole type (target-distractor similarity) affected performance, but there was not a significant subsequent miss error effect. As predicted, participants were both faster and less accurate in the presence of a clock than when no clock was present. Our findings may inform how dermatologists can be trained to perform the most accurate and efficient skin cancer screenings. Reliable and valid screenings can not only save lives by catching cancers early, but also save on expensive and invasive procedures by avoiding false positives.